Moscow, May 8 (IANS/RIA Novosti): Lawyers of a Russian political activist’s wife, have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.

Her eight-year prison sentence was slammed last year by then-president Dmitry Medvedev as “harsh”.

Taisiya Osipova, 28, was arrested in 2010 and sentenced in late 2011 to 10 years in jail after police found four grams of heroin at her home in the Russian city of Smolensk.

Osipova, a former opposition activist, said the drugs were planted by officers when she refused to reveal information on her husband Sergei Fomchenkov.

He is a leading member of the unregistered Other Russia opposition party led by veteran political firebrand and writer Eduard Limonov.

The sentence was overturned on appeal in February 2012 after Medvedev criticised it and called for a fresh probe.
The court, however, refused to free Osipova "a diabetic with a young daughter" on bail.

In her new trial in August, 2012, state prosecutors asked the judge to jail Osipova for four years. But she was sentenced to eight years.

Lawyers for Osipova said they had never heard of a Russian court handing down a sentence twice that requested by the prosecution, and said the verdict was clearly "politically motivated".